History of Slots

History of Slots

Slots (or slot machines) have a short and therefore well-documented history in comparison to most other casino games.

The person considered the “father” of slots is Charles Fey, a Bavarian who migrated to California in the late 19th century. Fey assembled his first slot machine in 1895, and even though it was not the first slot machine ever (there had been prototypes as early as in 1870), it was his name to remain in history. Fey’s life story is definitely worth a mention: After he moved to the United States, firstly to New Jersey and then to California, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and doctors wouldn’t give him more than a year to live. In his twenties at the time, he found somehow a way to cheat death and make it further into gambling history.

His very first slot machine was called Liberty Bell. It was operated very much like most of today’s casino slot machines: Inserting a nickel into the slot would release the handle, the player’s pulling the handle down would then set the reels spinning and if they would eventually stop with the right combination of symbols visible to the player, the machine would drop the awarded coins. Initially there used to be three reels with ten symbols on each. The chance to get three of the same symbols aligned and thus win the jackpot was one in a thousand. There was also a bell that rang to announce that the jackpot was won, but it was removed in later versions.

Charles Fey was assembling his Liberty Bell slots in his basement and renting them to local San Francisco casinos when he partnered with the Mills Novelty Company in 1907 and modified the Liberty Bell by adding a cast iron case and cast iron feet with toes. Then the Operator Bell was introduced in 1910 with a gooseneck coin entry and fruit symbols on the reels. The machines with cast iron cases were quite heavy, 30,000 of them had been produced by the time the cast iron case was replaced with cheaper and lighter wood cabinets in 1915. Slots were further modernised in the 1930s as they were made to operate more quietly (referred to as the “silent bell” because of that), the jackpot was doubled, and the Mills Novelty Company began designing wood cabinets with various themes: the Lion Head (1931), the War Eagle, the Roman Head and the Castle Front (1933).

The design of Fey’s slot machines was entirely mechanical, but it was so efficient that it is still used today in some mechanical gambling devices. There was only one major drawback however – pulling the handle down in a certain way would almost certainly win the jackpot and cheating was thus possible.

In the middle of the 20th century slot machines were made electromechanical. The most impressive slot machine of the time was the Super Big Bertha, which cost beyond $150,000 to produce. It was powered by a five-horsepower motor and had 8 reels with 20 symbols on each. It would also pay back only 80% of the inserted coins and offered the slim chance of 1 in 25.6 billion to win the jackpot.

Presently slot machines operate differently – microprocessor-controlled, cheating thus virtually impossible, and with a lot more symbols on the reels (leading to reduced odds for the player). Furthermore, an increasing number of slots are now produced with video monitors simulating the spinning of the reels. Most new slots also do not accept coins and are set in motion by pressing a button instead of pulling a handle down.

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